There is a kind of writing so rare and accomplished that it seems to erase the very nuts and bolts of its own construction. Reading it can produce an experience that feels close to miraculous. Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell novels have it, for example; Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and Light Years by James Salter also spring to mind. It’s not merely a matter of technical mastery, though of course that’s a prerequisite. It can feel as though something sublime, almost uncanny, is going on.
In Sebastian Barry’s